Knife in the Water
Plays one sound and others
own/self-released

Aside from their appropriation of the title of the first Roman Polanski movie for their own moniker, Knife in the Water's music does possess a distinctly cinematic quality. There are characters, and like any good Greek tragedy or Bergman film, their own faults and flaws are their downfall in the end. Over the course of the disc's fifty minutes, we meet the protagonist, who wakes to a burning home, the married woman in the crumpled car, Norma, Cotton, the jilted lover, the muse at the backdoor, and the disintegrating hero laughing (or is it crying?) in the ocean as the movie fades to black. The subtle blending of organ, twanging guitar, pedal steel, bass, drum kit, and the entwining throats of Aaron and Laura provide the proper musical backdrop and landscape that allows these characters to move, interact, cursing the others as well as themselves.

The image that this album conjures up is the barren stretches of Texas plains, the shriveled brush and faces that are rooted in dusty bars, the greasy stick and stink of cheap make-up, cheap perfume, and cheap motel rooms. Imagine Wim Wenders retelling Blood Simple. Maybe the music that George Jones and Tammy Wynette would have made with Nick Cave in the depths of a week-long binge of red-yellow pills kicked back with Jim Beam's. Or that magical space of time when Palace's West Palm Beach / Gulf Shores 7" first washed over your speakers, purifying the squalor that nearly drowned you. Whatever metaphor you decide to take with you on the way out of the theatre, this is one movie that will continue to resonate inside for weeks on end.

Contact: Knife in the Water, 4014b Maplewood Avenue, Austin, TX 78722, USA.

Copyright © 1999 Andy Beta